Chinese Returning Doctoral Student: How Does the Social Capital Earned in the U.S. Influence their Job-Seeking Experience in China

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Tuesday I)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Global-Local Tensions of Globalized Education

Proposal

As one of the countries that send the most students to study abroad, China has witnessed an emerging reversed “brain gain” because of the increasing number of students returning from the U.S. (Hao & Welch, 2016). Whereas it initially lost more talented scholars than it retained, China now has more scholars returning back for the country’s attractive recruiting policies.

On one hand, diverse networks of local and foreign contacts, good communication skills, foreign language ability, and professional knowledge, it is widely assumed that Chinese doctoral returnees would be placed in an advantaged position in the labor market. On the other hand, the study abroad experiences of returnees would also show them to be a somewhat “disadvantaged” group during the job seeking process. The long duration of time studying abroad leads to the returnees’ lower level of access to the local employment environment, an insufficient understanding about Chinese culture, a lack of knowledge of the current domestic labor market, and inadequate familiarity with local employers (Buckley et al., 2006; Hao & Welch, 2016).

This study aims to understand the advantages and disadvantages of the social capital earned by returnees from the U.S. on their job-seeking process in China. Furthermore, through comparing the job seeking experience of returning and local doctoral students, this study helps to offer an insight into the influence of the foreign study experience on a person’s occupational attainment. Additionally, this study generates an in-depth understanding of the domestic employment environment, which will help the prospective returnees have better preparation for job seeking after returning to China.

Theoretical framework
Lin (2017) defined social capital as the embedded resources in one’s social networks and the resources could be accessed and mobilized through their networks. In this model, social capital could produce returns through two mechanisms: accessibility and mobilization. Within these two patterns, occupational status is specifically associated with network resources, extensity of ties, tie strength with contact, and contact status (Lin, 1999).

People usually use two methods for job searching: 1) a formal search, and/or 2) an informal search (Mouw, 2003). Moreover, within the informal channel, the relations with the job contacts, strong or weak, will lead to diverse job outcomes. Lin (1999; 2017) supported the crucial role of weak ties because among the weak relations, resources embedded become more diverse or heterophilous, which increases the chances of having better resources. In contrast, the strong tie is found to account for more success in the job hunting for an academic occupation. Murraye et al. (1981) discovered that information about academic jobs for scientists was approximately seven times more likely to have come from strong ties than from weak ties.

The application of social capital in the Chinese context is insufficiently investigated. This study would be helpful to fulfill this gap by using the two patterns of processing social capital to explore how returnees access and mobilize their social capital and generate a return. Additionally, under the trend of globalization, people could gain social capital transnationally. For instance, in addition to strong ties and weak ties, Chinese returning students have exogenous networks and endogenous networks, which could add another dimension to the type of social ties. This research shows how social capital could be transferred or developed cross nationally.

Methods
The qualitative research method is applied in this study. Four participants, two with U.S. Ph.D. degrees and two with domestic Ph.D. degrees, were engaged in the interview. The semi-structured interviews were conducted separately and each interview lasted approximately one hour. Then the researcher coded the transcript, analyzed the data, and generated the following themes.

Conclusion
This study identifies a type of social tie which is crucial to obtain an academic job in China. It is the strong work-related ties, which particularly refers to the advisor-related ties. In Chinese academia, strong relationships with advisors and other colleagues are the most important influences on job-seeking outcomes rather than other types of strong ties such as those with relatives or friends.

However, the strong relational feature of the academic labor market results in certain disadvantages for returning doctoral students. Due to the long duration of studying in the U.S., the returnees lack local work-related ties. This inadequacy of domestic contacts leads to their low degree of access to domestic academic resources, and further, their low recognition from academic “circles”. Moreover, without strong work-related ties in China, the returning doctorates have a deficiency understanding of the domestic labor market such as cultures, working conditions, and employees’ satisfaction. Additionally, the returnees are unable to efficiently mobilize their social capital earned in the U.S. to obtain a good job because of differences in these institutional systems. Consequently, this study shows that in terms of social capital, the studying abroad experiences grants returning doctorates limited social capital which needs to be accessed and mobilized to gain a better job in the Chinese labor market, compared to their domestic counterparts, who have more “beneficial” social capital in the Chinese labor market.

As the group of people who received the highest educational degree from the country with the most advanced education system, the returning doctoral students from the U.S. are widely considered as “prestigious” in the labor market (e.g. Alberts & Hazen, 2005; Hao and Welch, 2012; 2016). However, in this study, the findings argue that most of returning doctorates are disadvantaged in the job-seeking process, compared to their local counterparts. Due to the strong-tie-based feature of domestic academia, the returning doctoral students have limited social capital to mobilize for a better job. Therefore, it is reasonable to question the balance between the cost of investing in studying abroad and its benefits to a person’s occupational attainment.

Last but not least, it is worthwhile to know the disadvantages of building foreign networks in the U.S., as well as the eventual advantages of these networks when returnees obtain an academic job. It is important for returning doctoral students to balance their investment in building up different types of ties in different periods of their careers.

Author

• Yuejia Wang, University at Buffalo